Bizspace Spotlight

The days are numbered for the D.C. Office of Cable Television’s Tilden Street Northwest home, as the agency will finally hire a contractor to renovate its new headquarters — a former Black Entertainment Television studio in Northeast.

The long awaited move from the Intelsat Building at 3007 Tilden St. NW to the 29,234-square-foot BET studio at 1899 9th St. NE will not be complete by the end of the year, as the District once promised. Proposals to the RFP, issued Oct. 5 by the Department of General Services, are due from interested bidders by Oct. 26. The RFP demands that the renovation work, likely to cost upward of $10 million, is done in 120 days.

BET entered into a 25-year land lease for the District-owned 9th Street site in 1988. Then BET was bought by Viacom and moved to New York. The studio has been vacant for years. In 2010, the District paid BET an “assignment fee” of $2.45 million to acquire the leasehold interest.

The studio will be modernized from the top down. All building systems must be updated “to meet the needs of a fully digital studio,” according to the RFP. The building includes two studios with high ceilings for lighting grids and jib operation, sufficient crawl space for cable wiring and access, a loading dock for large equipment and set pieces, in-place satellite receivers and ample parking.

Moving the Office of Cable Television, which operates the D.C. Council’s Channel 13 in addition to the recently redubbed “District of Columbia Network” on Channel 16, has been a trial, one nixed deal after another. Read all about that drama here.

Black Entertainment Holdings Inc. continues to own its D.C. studio at 1235 W St. NE.